Finally, a knowing smile appeared on his lips. “That’s the only stupid thing you’ve said all day, and you don’t look stupid. Your boss won’t be impressed.”
He waited for that to sink in. So did I, and it didn’t take long. He was right about one thing: Gordon wouldn’t be impressed with my handling of the situation. For the past seven years, he’d pulled me aside—more than once, I admit—whenever I displayed what he called my “tendency to be too direct.” And here it was again, practically smacking me in the face. It was time to fade into the backfield and punt or pass or something, but I didn’t know what to do with the ball. Thankfully, Polk did.
“Look,” he said. “I’m in a hurry. I don’t have time to break in somebody new. Sit down. Let’s get this meeting over with.”
For reasons I didn’t want to think about and couldn’t have explained, but for which I thanked Glinda the Good Witch, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and the patron saint of lucky breaks, whoever that was, Polk seemed to be offering me a temporary cease-fire. It would have been career suicide not to accept it. I sat and immediately pulled out our standard Aames & Associates contract as well as our Terms & Conditions Agreement, a document that basically says: We’ll give you the best advice we can, but don’t blame us if things don’t pan out. I wanted to get Polk’s signature on the papers before I did anything else to blow this situation. Polk skimmed through the pages, and then signed both documents. Afterward, he put my pen in his pocket and pushed back his chair.
“I have to go. I have a one-thirty patient.”
I glanced at my watch. “Gosh, it’s two-fifteen.”
“Don’t worry. He’ll wait.” He grabbed the check and studied it for a moment. Before I had a chance to tell him that Aames & Associates never allows clients to pay for lunch, he patted his back pants pocket.
“I must have left my wallet somewhere,” he said. “Do you mind? I’ll catch the next one.” He handed me the bill. “I love spending Gordon Aames’s money. Let’s do it again, and soon.” He winked and headed toward the street.
While I waited for the waiter to return my credit card, I watched Polk arguing with the valet. I presumed he was testing his missing-wallet theory again. Whatever the doctor was complaining about, his forcefulness proved too much for the poor valet, who eventually threw up his arms and relinquished the keys to Polk’s Mercedes. The doctor sidled into the car, which shortly thereafter slipped into the vortex of Los Angeles traffic.
Polk’s valet caper confirmed my worst fears: The doctor was going to be a nightmare to work with. I could deal with his take-no-prisoners attitude and his entrepreneur’s oversize ego, I thought, but if he ever called me Tuck again, he was going to end up with prosthetic kneecaps.
The following morning, I’d cleared my calendar so I could put all my efforts into the NeuroMed project. Like Polk, I wanted the plan finished quickly. I was on the computer, researching a bill before Congress that threatened to ax Medicare reimbursements—and cut into NeuroMed’s profit potential—when I received a telephone call from the doctor.
“I was out of line yesterday,” he told me, “with some of what I said. The stuff about owning you. The thesis bit. What can I say? I get intense. No offense meant. From now on, I promise to be good.”
His apology left me feeling bewildered and somewhat suspicious. Was his act of contrition sincere, or was he manipulating me? Finally, I decided that his motivation didn’t matter all that much, because at the time, maintaining a good relationship with Polk was good for the firm and good for my career.
“Maybe I overreacted,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
Those had been our first apologies, but they certainly weren’t our last. Despite our good intentions, over the next two months we continued to butt heads over everything from whose ideas were more strategic to whose turn it was to buy coffee. He was gruff, bullheaded, impulsive, and sometimes fun to be with.
As insistent as Polk was that I finish the plan quickly, he wasn’t always focused on that goal. He frequently interrupted our meetings to rant about his pet peeves, like when he claimed the New England Journal of Medicine had gotten it all wrong in an article on balance testing protocols. I quickly learned that if I wanted to get any work done, it was better to indulge his tangents for an hour or so than waste a day denying that I was closed-minded or—what was worse—boring. That “boring” accusation always hit too close to home, because not counting my marriage, I hadn’t had a date since the Spice Girls’ last hit record. My ex-husband, Eric, and I continued to see each other after the divorce, but those weren’t actually dates. They were more like supervised visits to see who got the salad spinner.
I hadn’t always liked Milton Polk, but eventually I found things to admire about him, and I knew he felt the same way about me. The guy was an original. He was tireless, like an oversize hummingbird fueling up in a field of wildflowers. Not only that, but he could hold my attention with an idea. So over time, we formed a curious kind of bond.
I won’t say that completing the NeuroMed business plan was all fun and games, but by early October I had completed it. After that, Polk and I didn’t see much of each other. At first we kept in touch by telephone, but even those phone calls tapered off as the days rolled by. I went on to other projects for other clients, and Polk presumably went on to sell his expansion ideas to investors.
On that November morning when I dressed for what I thought was imminent success, it had been about a month since I last heard from Polk. I was still high-fiving myself for surviving the experience, glad that the NeuroMed project was behind me. Before heading for work, I made sure that Muldoon’s water bowl was full and checked my outfit one last time in the bathroom mirror. Of course, if I’d had any idea what was in store for me when I arrived at the office that day, I would have chucked that prissy blouse and the flat shoes for combat boots and a flak jacket.
2
my employer, Aames & Associates, occupied the fifteenth floor of a smoky-glass high-rise on Hope Street, a building that could only be described as a boring footnote in some architect’s fading career. But the building’s exterior didn’t matter to Gordon Aames. What did matter to him was keeping his overhead low, which he was able to do thanks to a favorable lease agreement.
In addition to the personnel in human resources, marketing, information technology support, and administration, the firm employed around a hundred consultants, a number that had remained relatively stable over the years because Gordon Aames made it his personal mission to avoid layoffs by constantly trolling for clients. Most of our competition hired employees when big projects came into the firm and laid them off when those projects ended, but at Aames & Associates, everybody stayed as long as everybody hustled. If you survived long enough and hustled hard enough, like me, you went from consultant to manager to senior manager until, finally, you got a shot at partner and a move from a small, windowless cubbyhole off a central hallway to an office with a view and potted plants that needed watering, not dusting.
Actually, my office wasn’t all that bad, even if it was the only spot of color in a sea of wishy-washy beige. A few months back, the partners had the whole floor redecorated to make the decor more uniform. The new look was fine if you liked paintings that matched the carpet, but to me it felt like working in a sensory deprivation chamber. That’s why I smuggled in a colorful Moorish area rug, and a dark wicker lowboy to hold my books and a few tchotchkes. So far, no one had forced me into the United Front for the Elimination of Color, which was good. I wasn’t much of a joiner.
I pulled the latest Serrano Seafood profit-and-loss statement from the file cabinet. Gordon was going to love what I had to show him. The company’s problems started when Benjy and Gino Serrano’s father died, and the brothers each left their respective jobs to take over the family business. Unfortunately, Benjy taught high school French and Gino repaired refrigerators, and neither of them knew much about selling squid. By the time they realized that they were in over their heads, the company was all but pu
shing up daisies. That’s when they’d called me.
When I first brought the Serrano working contract to my firm’s managing partners for approval, they thought it spelled failure with a capital F, but in the end, they okayed it because they didn’t like to turn down business. Once I figured out the Serranos’ problem, I set up a new computer system to track their inventory and developed a risky little marketing plan with an ad campaign featuring a grumpy clam in a vat of chocolate—don’t ask—and the rest was fine-tuning. In less than five months, the seafood company was showing a healthy profit. The brothers were, shall we say, most grateful. Gordon would be, too, when he saw these figures.
I put my mind into interview mode and headed for Gordon’s office, thinking that the only other obstacle I’d face that day was his executive assistant, Marsha Bennett, an officious woman in her mid-forties who needed an antifreeze cocktail just to crack a smile. Frankly, I found her intimidating. There was nothing in Marsha’s job description that required her to be nice, only to protect Gordon’s flank, and she had that technique down to a science. So even though I had an appointment, I wasn’t surprised in the least when she kept me waiting in Gordon’s anteroom for ten minutes in an oversize mushroom-colored wing chair that made even me feel petite. Marsha had spent too many years in the halls of power not to know a few maneuvers of her own.
When she finally signaled me to go into Gordon’s office, I found him with a pained look on his face, rummaging in his desk drawer, obviously looking for something. A moment later, he pulled out a bottle of antacid and popped a couple of tablets in his mouth.
Gordon was sixty-one and a lean five feet ten. He looked tanned and fit, but he was a worrier, and that had taken a toll on him. For a long time, he drank too much—claimed it helped him relax—until an ulcer finally convinced him to stop. Recently, he’d developed an artificial bald spot on the crown of his head from a nervous habit of pulling out his hair. That made a lot of people cringe, but not me. In a way, I felt sorry for Gordon. He took his responsibilities to his clients and employees very seriously, and lately, I’d sensed that the pressure was getting to him.
When Gordon looked up over the top of his wire-rimmed glasses and noticed me standing there, he frowned. That struck me as a little odd, but I ignored it because I was jazzed about the Serrano financial statements and knew he would be, too. I laid the reports in front of him and waited for a few well-deserved attagirls. He thumbed briefly through the pages.
“Nice job,” he said.
Nice job? I mean, come on. I thought my chocolate-covered clam deserved better than that. I sank into a leather chair in front of his desk, disappointed by his reaction but determined to maintain a positive attitude. I smiled and waited for my first interview question. When it came, it wasn’t at all what I expected.
“Have you ever heard of Mo Whitener, DDS?” he said.
“A dentist named Mo Whitener? You’ve got to be kidding. Is that short for Molly or Morris?”
“From the letter I got in the mail this morning, I’d say it’s short for money.” Gordon removed his glasses and massaged the bridge of his nose. “Dr. Whitener represents a group of people who invested heavily with one of our clients. Now they aren’t too happy about it. They’ve hired a lawyer.”
“Wow. Mo Whitener, denture capitalist.”
Gordon didn’t even crack a smile, and that’s when I knew I was in trouble.
“The client is Milton Polk,” he said.
When I connected the dots—investors, Polk, lawyers—I felt a jolt of alarm. I thought back to our first meeting at the Auberge. It was the only time he spoke specifically about his backers. What did he say? Something about investors already knowing whom they were dealing with. I wondered if Whitener was a friend or colleague who trusted enough to buy into Polk’s hyperbole—that everybody was going to get rich from NeuroMed—without reading my business plan.
“So what does Mo want?” I said. “A twelve-step program for buyer’s remorse?”
Gordon put his glasses back on, which only magnified the tension in his eyes. “No. He wants the group’s eleven million back, plus attorneys’ fees.”
I laughed. It was a nervous laugh, but a laugh all the same. “Eleven million? As in dollars? That’s a complete crock, Gordon. In fact, it sounds like Whitener’s pulling some kind of scam. The NeuroMed deal was shaky at best. Polk understood that, and so did I. That’s why we only asked for three million. Do you honestly believe any savvy investor’s going to say, ‘Forget three million; I’d rather lose eleven instead’?”
“Polk signed our standard agreements?” Gordon asked.
“Of course.”
“And the master copy?”
One by one, I ticked off on my fingers the original NeuroMed documents that were filed away in my office. “Contract. Terms and Conditions Agreement. Master copy of the final business plan, with Polk’s signature on a cover letter and his initials on each page of the document. They’re all in a maroon document envelope in my file cabinet.”
Gordon didn’t respond right away. Finally, he said, “Take a look at this.”
He handed me a gray booklet with the firm’s logo on the cover, which I assumed was a copy of the NeuroMed plan. I flipped through it until I got to the five-year profit projections. That’s when I realized something was wrong. The totals didn’t make sense at all. I turned back to the section on strategic issues, which summarized the company’s goals and objectives. I felt as if my head were floating away from my body as I read the text. It claimed that NeuroMed had developed revolutionary soft-ware that performed complex neurological testing on patients in remote areas via the Internet! It further stated that the company planned to raise twenty-five million dollars to launch NeuroMed.com, and estimated that the initial public offering of stock would generate a minimum of two hundred million dollars on the first day of trading.
“This isn’t the report I wrote. Internet testing might be possible down the road, but for now it’s science fiction, and so is NeuroMed dot-com. This is all bullshit.”
“Yeah, Whitener thinks it’s bullshit, too,” Gordon said. “He also thinks that since those reports were sent through the U.S. Postal Service it’s a little more than that. He thinks it’s mail fraud. Whitener claims he invested in NeuroMed based solely on your name and the firm’s reputation. He holds you responsible for falsifying this report, and the firm for failing to catch you at it. It’s all in the letter, Tucker. He wants the money back by Monday, one week from today. If he doesn’t get it, he’ll call in the feds.”
I saw Gordon’s lips move, but I couldn’t process the message. All I could think of were a few choice F words: FBI, felony, and federal prison. It wasn’t until I read the letter myself that the gravity of Whitener’s threat finally sank in. To a business consultant like me, nothing short of claiming that I’d poisoned the entire office staff with my apple brown betty could be worse than an accusation of fraud. Why? Because over the past few years, both individuals and entire companies had been toppled by similar charges. And even though Whitener’s allegations were false, they could still damage my reputation and destroy my career at Aames & Associates. If that happened, it would also end my prospects of getting hired at any other consulting firm. I could even lose my house. The best I could hope for was a one-shot book advance for my fall-from-grace memoir.
“Who in his right mind would invest in a dot-com right now?” I said. “Doesn’t Whitener read the newspapers? This has to be some kind of horrible mistake.”
“Perhaps.” Gordon’s voice was a low monotone that could only be described as creepy. “But there was a lot of pressure on you to make Polk happy, Tucker, especially with the partner vote coming up. So if you wrote this business plan, I’ll understand, but you’ve got to tell me now.”
I suppose Gordon was obligated to ask me that question, but it still hurt. He had always been my champion at the firm, even when it caused problems with the other partners. I didn’t think he’d desert me now, but
I had no illusions. When push came to shove, he’d protect the firm first, because he had to. It was the one thing he couldn’t allow to fail.
“Give me a little credit, Gordon. I try to please all my clients, but I don’t invent harebrained rip-offs so they can dot their Is with happy faces.”
He paused as if weighing his response. A few moments later, he nodded. “Okay, that’s a good start. Now, I want you to tell me everything you know about Milton Polk: what you said to him, what he said to you. And, Tucker? Don’t leave anything out. Am I making myself clear?”
I tried not to sweat on the leather as I told Gordon as much as I could remember. He stared out the window without saying a word, until I mentioned how the Internet idea had come up at that first meeting.
“Could any of your notes about the Internet have gotten into the final report?”
“I didn’t take notes, Gordon. Polk and I were just talking. I made a joke. He laughed. That was the end of it. No way did he have the money to develop that fantasy. Besides, do you actually think I’d deliver a final project to a client without reading it?”
“Obviously, somebody tampered with the data. Who had access to your computer?”
I scanned my brain for a list of names. “Anybody who was alone in my office.”
“Did you discuss the Internet scenario with anybody else?”
“A couple of technical people. I guess they could have mentioned it to others.”
I didn’t tell Gordon, but that included the two other candidates for partner, both of whom had a lot invested in seeing me fail. Only, Mark Ross wasn’t conniving enough. He was basically a nice-guy bean counter suffering from imagination deficit disorder. On the other hand, Richard Hastings was a glad-handing sneak who had the ethics of a guy who’d gotten his MBA from a matchbook cover. He was always sniffing around my office, looking for screwups he could exploit. Hastings would love to discredit me, but I didn’t think he’d railroad me into federal prison just to beat me out of a promotion.
False Profits Page 2
